Jade Trau and her team have just moved into a model new room in the heart of NYC’s diamond district. She has a decide on amount of items on screen for us to play with, new and previous designs, every a person placing its greatest side forward in the bright, all-natural mild.
“I think that necklaces in some way feel most intrinsic to me,” she says of her preferred jewelry to style. “I enjoy developing other groups much too, but in some way anytime I decide on up a diamond I’m like, ‘What necklace am I heading to make this into.’” Trau herself is putting on a couple layers of necklaces, each individual piece displaying off her unique layout design.
Trau approaches her items diamond-initially, something that sets her apart from other jewellery designers. And this outlook could possibly have a thing to do with her family’s historical past in the diamond organization. “I really do not know if it’s a serious tale or if it is folklore, but the tale of my household is that my fantastic-fantastic-grandfather formulated the rose cut in the early 1900s,” she shares with a smile.
Trau’s Jewish ancestors had been in the diamond enterprise in Belgium, which is how they survived the war. “My grandmother was a seamstress and she sewed diamonds in the lapels of her coats,” she clarifies. “They fled to a Swiss refugee camp when the war broke out and she traded diamonds in the camp to endure.” And endure they did.
Just after the war, her spouse and children was supplied a web page from De Beers as part of reparations, but her grandfather, who had fled to Tangiers all through the war, immigrated to America exactly where he became a Rabbi.
“Natural diamonds are why I am alive, it’s how my grandparents survived Entire world War II, it is how we survived put up-war, it is why I have been afforded the beautiful upbringing that I experienced and living in New York Town and the instruction that I’ve had and every thing else,” she states, unwavering in her appreciation for all that organic diamonds have afforded her. “And also, there is an strength to the plan that they ended up developed less than the earth for what, a million decades?”
Over and above the intrinsic value, Trau cherishes the time and human ingenuity that goes into building these breathtaking stones. “It’s like a a few-layer cake of creativity,” she claims. “The creativity of the human ingenuity of becoming equipped to mine them and then sharpening them and earning these gorgeous diamond cuts with them. And then I get to consider that and insert an additional layer of artistry and make a piece of jewelry with it.”
Being in the diamond industry and the jewelry layout industry are two extremely different points, and at her core, Trau is a diamond dealer and a diamond lover. Her enthusiasm for these gems is clear as her encounter lights up talking about the diamonds themselves. “There’s so considerably artistry that goes into reducing a diamond and the reality that anyone had to develop this emerald slash, pear shape, oval, and they all glance a little unique.”
It is this artistry and appreciation for each individual of the cuts that led her to her signature Alchemy design in her types. “I was on trip, and I designed a record of each and every single diamond slash and if that diamond cut had a identity what would the character of that diamond lower be, and down to a kite and a 50 % moon,” she recalls. “How do you take one thing and just honor it, honor its intrinsic natural beauty?”
Alchemy does just that: The slim gold outline on her diamond pieces accentuates the ideal areas of the diamond and definitely lets you see the condition of the gem. “I never ever comprehended that ‘as tiny metallic as possible’ thing simply because finally if that is how jewelry was produced a hundred yrs ago it wouldn’t exist any more,” she claims of some of the much more modern designs out there. But, at the very same time, Trau feels that a correct bezel covers much too a lot of the diamond. Alchemy is the perfect balance of the two.
Her newly-introduced Poppy collection, named after her grandfather whom she known as Poppy, utilizes that original Alchemy structure, but in cluster kind, and has been an extraordinary results. The clusters are reminiscent of a bouquet of bouquets, but the Alchemy edges retain it from searching way too feminine.
“I feel that is why [the Poppy collection] is so relatable throughout the scale,” she says. “If you’re a lot more girly, you see the girly facet of it and if you are a lot more edgy, you see the edgy side of it.” The ideal equilibrium that would make the pieces timeless still modern-day, a harmony that Trau tries to strike in all of her parts.
Trau does not take into consideration herself girly or a tomboy. Escalating up with all sisters, she craved that masculine power, which she now will get from her sons, who adore donning her jewelry. It’s yet another motive potentially why she was captivated to the male-dominated diamond business.
“From the diamond side of the organization and for all the decades that I was going to Antwerp as a diamond buyer, it was type of gnarly,” she clarifies. “Nobody took me seriously at all. For the first 10 occasions that I went to Antwerp, they didn’t speak to me.” Now, with a successful a long time-prolonged occupation driving her, Trau is much far more self-confident in who she is as a designer and as a business enterprise operator.
Not only does she want to set an example for her boys, but for the ladies she’s employed to be a portion of the Jade Trau brand. “There are my boys, and they’re my girls,” she claims with a snicker. “And I am pretty conscious of wanting to give the full amount of focus to my boys and to my girls.”
“I just want to come to feel at ease that I am managing absolutely everyone around me, both of those my clientele and my vendors and initially and foremost the girls who get the job done for me with respect and with an open line of communication,” she states. Like any individual who owns a enterprise, some times Trau feels like she’s killing it and some days she has a lot less confidence. “I really feel like I’m mastering every single day and I’m making an attempt to figure it out every working day.”
1 matter that gives her confidence these days is planning. “I can consider a sigh of relief that I come to feel like I have a core collection and that building does not sense really hard.” Trau says she could design and style for several hours, with concepts and ideas flowing and considerable. “I’m creating for all of the jewellery fans in my place of work,” she claims of generating wearable and classy items for her traces. A good matter as her office environment is loaded with “die-hard jewelry fans!”
Creating for her line is fulfilling of class, but bespoke parts are where she will get to have the most entertaining. “The [bespoke pieces] that conclusion up sticking out the most are the ones that are the most hard.” She exhibits me a photo of a big marquise diamond ring, a personalized piece for a shopper.
“It was so substantial,” Trau remembers of the heirloom diamond. “And I was like, how am I going to make this in any way a wearable ring?” In the close, Trau made a triple-satin concluded gold band to support the diamond, a beautiful stop solution.
Trau enjoys a marquise slice, as evidenced by just one of her very own heirloom parts, a grayish-brown marquise diamond that she found out sifting through packages of diamonds when she was doing the job for her grandfather in her 20s. “I did not know what to do with it and I just left it in the secure,” she shares. “And then for my 40th birthday, I was like, I’m going to make something with it.”
Looking through the certification, she found out her grandfather received the diamond in August 1980. “I did the math simply because I know what the production cycle is, so that arrived from an April web-site, which was April 1980, the calendar year I was born.” Trau smiles at the fond memory. “I was just like, I know that there is divine intervention and I was like oh, my grandfather is reminding me and telling me.”
“Someone can hand you one thing and it is not about what they handed you, it is about what you do with it,” she states of heading into a relatives enterprise. “My grandfather gave me diamond understanding and he empowered me with the entire world all around me, but I chose to absolutely pivot it and do something else.” And that one thing else appears to be to have labored out for her, as each a effective job and fulfilling a lifelong passion: purely natural diamond jewellery.